GoldFinger1969

The premiums in 2011 were when the price was soaring to $50/oz. These premiums initially were when Covid was thought to impact supply availability even with silver not rising much in price. These premiums have persisted much longer than I would have expected. The silver price should have risen up to the adjusted price OR the premium faded if the silver price remained about the same (which it has been). Strange.....

Good stuff....anything planned on Saints or Morgans or another coin type that has a wide collector following ? The topics above are very detailed and have less followers compared to other potential topics.

Ron, if these are the coins from the other thread...send 'em in and let us know when they are graded. It will answer ALL questions and provide some good back-and-forth on the results. Good Luck !

Nice-looking coins....not familiar with them but some decent pics....impossible to grade from the pics given the lighting angles and somewhat blurry shots among the group, but few of us take really great pics. Ron....let us know how the coins come back.

How much does an MS67 sell for ?

But when did the mirror finish become common place ? I know with Saints the proofs weren't that impressive and they could never decide between matte and satin finishes.

Around the 1930's, right ? Might have been with the new Washington Quarter if I recall.

I haven't checked in a while, but the price on recent U.S. bills with funky serial numbers really exploded. They were cheap -- $25 - $100 -- and folks with disposable income and plenty of keyboard time bid them all up. Ditto SC's and GC's and Large Denomation Bills.

I'm not sure what WC thinks of gold here (probably OK as he dislikes stocks and other asset classes) but I am a buyer of gold here. The next $1,000 on gold is UP.

Sunday GC Auction Results: Some interesting bidding ended last night ($$$ figures may be rounded off for simplicity).... On the 1928 Saint.....you had an MS67 PCGS go for $14,500/$16,313 but only 1 bidder.....$2,300/$2,600 for an MS65 NGC...an MS66 PCGS went for $2,925/$3,300...another MS66 went for $3,200/$3,600...and an MS66 OGH CAC $5,060/$5,700. Most Saints had 10-30 bidders representing a liquid, true market. An MS63 1927 NGC went for $1,955/$2,200....the 1927 MS66 CAC I bid on and lost went for $4,800/$5,400. A couple of 1908 NM's NGC MS63 went for $1,875/$2,100. A couple of details Saints went for about $1,750/$1,950.

Interesting Commentary On The 1908 No Motto WF Hoard from David Lawrence: The 1908 No Motto double eagle is one of the most common issues of the Saint Gaudens series. Prior to the 1990s, they were one of the lowest value coins in the set. Dealers’ sight-unseen bids would specifically exclude the 1908 No Motto. This was not only due to their wide availability, but also their quality; most had low eye appeal and weren’t appealing to customers. The entire landscape of the issue changed in the 1990s. Unbeknownst to numismatists, a massive hoard of 19,900 1908 No Motto double eagles had been traded as part of an international payment in 1917. They escaped the Gold Surrender of 1933 and remained untouched until the 1960s. At that point the original Mint bags had deteriorated, so they were put into new bags, sealed, and left alone yet again. In 1996, dealer Ron Gillio had the opportunity to purchase the hoard and was astounded by the quality of the pieces. The coins were stored briefly in a Wells Fargo bank in Las Vegas after being purchased by Gillio, then sent for grading in 1997. As a result of this brief stay, they have been dubbed the Wells Fargo hoard. While some have certainly found their way into NGC holders, the entire group was originally graded by PCGS. However, these were no ordinary pieces; in contrast to the typical unattractive pieces, these were incredibly high quality. Out of almost 10,000 uncirculated pieces, thousands graded MS66. There are currently approximately 9,000 coins graded MS66 by PCGS, so a decent percentage of these came from the Wells Fargo hoard. Almost 1,000 pieces graded MS67, which make up most, if not all, of the 896 pieces of the grade at PCGS. However, these weren’t the highlight of the hoard. One hundred and one pieces graded MS68, of which there are currently 102 graded – only one found outside the hoard. The stars of the find were ten pieces which graded MS69. No other Saint Gaudens double eagles of any date had been found in MS69, making them truly shocking finds. According to David Hall, graders of the time at PCGS pulled out the top three and “tried real hard to find one… that we could call MS70.” They narrowed it down to three, and while none of them made the cut, one was deemed the best. The label reads, “Wells Fargo–The Best One!” This particular piece became part of the Phillip H. Morse Collection of Saint-Gaudens Coinage which is memorialized in the book , THE COINAGE OF AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS: AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE PHILIP H MORSE COLLECTION, published in 2006. A year earlier, in 2005, the collection was auctioned. This “best” piece realized $94,875, which was the auction record for over a decade. Only four others have been offered at public auction, three of which sold for less than the Morse specimen. The current record holder is the Fox specimen which sold in January of 2020 for $96,000 at Heritage’s FUN sale. It was part of the Rollo Fox Collection of $20 Saint-Gaudens Gold which included other record-setting pieces as well, including a 1927 D double eagle in MS65+ that sold for $2.16 million. Only time will tell when the other five MS69s will come to the market, or how much they will bring when they do. Regardless, any MS69 is highly prized in a registry set and a sure sign of a truly remarkable collection. With the first MS69 Saint Gaudens double eagles ever found, the Wells Fargo hoard forever changed the landscape of the series. Even more so, the 1908 No Motto went from an unattractive and undesirable date to including some of the finest examples ever seen.

Ditto....if in a few months or even years the price comes back down a ton, I'd buy a set. But I really have no interest in the set at the current price or even a bit below....would rather buy a gold coin, a Saint, or a couple of nice CAC pre-1921 Morgans.

Nope, I see him on TV right now.........he's charging $2,700 for 6 coins.....5 Morgans and 1 Peace.....all MS70 (NGC). Philly, SanFran, and Denver mint marks....2 privvy coins....and the High Relief Peace.

Actually, I mistyped....the explosion in population was really in the Super Gem grades, not MS65's which the Saints Double Eagle book's price grid lists. I'm not sure what happened at the MS67 level and above once the Wells thing hit. Most PUBLISHED or early-internet prices would have focused on MS65 grades I would think. I'm not sure about the electronic dealer network. Maybe a vet here who followed the Saint market closely back then, Roger, or Mark....can chime in. I wasn't even following Saints at all back then.

I'm not sure if they ever sold at a rich premium even before the Wells Fargo Hoard added to the population. Certainly, there was no price decline when they first came out as detailed in RWB's book. A bit cheaper, if I recall.

When did proofs first have the mirror-like surface ? Lots of Morgan and Saint proofs were better struck than business strikes but nowhere near super-reflective (esp. the gold Saints).

I saw Rick Tomaska on TV and I believe his (overpriced) price was less but I can't remember.

Lots of high-quality Saints ending tonight over at GC....I'll report back any interesting final prices. I put in some stink bids but got blown away days ago.

Maybe.....but the market can remain irrational longer than we can remain solvent. If it takes 5 years or 10 years or 15 years to work itself out.....we can't sit in cash, gold, and BitCoin until then, right ?

I think Mark makes a fair point. We can differ on grades, even MS vs. AU, and that's not because someone is necessarily dishonest but honestly sees the coin differently. The fireworks on grading seem to not come from the numerical increments within MS or AU or EF....but the grading of circulated vs. uncirculated with the quantum drop in the number associated with it. And since the whole "friction" and bag marks stuff is in the eye of the (be)holder....we're never going to have a definitive answer on that.

Gold vs. Silver: Kinda snuck up on me, but I see that silver has definitely been weaker than gold the last few weeks. Don't know why those premiums on ASEs are so sticky. Gonna Google some stories to see what's up esp. since gold premiums are much more modest.

I knew that from the 1970's TV show "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" Horror In The Heights was the episode.

No, I think JG makes lots of good arguments. I always read him and like his thoughts, agree or disagree. I'm just saying that Inker and some of the other folks have nicer charts, tables, and numbers. As Jim Cramer says...when you cash in your profits or investment returns, they don't ask you to return them if you made them on overpriced stocks or not. No professional money manager would survive adhering to Hussman's mantra. And no retail investor would earn ANYTHING by staying in cash or gold, WC.....money market funds yield 0.1%.....bonds yield 2% or less.....stocks at least can offer decent yields (3-6%; leveraged vehicles 6-9%) and maybe capital appreciation. But if I buy a stock yielding 5% a year, unless it loses 50% over the next decade, I'll get a positive return. If it's flat, I make 50%. Any capital gains are a plus. I agree that stocks are not GREAT values. They are OK in the aggregate if your time horizon is a few years or a decade. Personally, I'm waiting to scale in lower. So we overlap on valuations with the difference being you don't want to buy either bonds or stocks or cash (?) and I realize that unless money market funds go to 2% or higher, you have to have some bond and some stock exposure. BitCoin and gold won't cut it.

Read the other guys at his company, like Ben Inker. They're very smart and tend to rely more on numbers whereas Grantham relies more on emotion. Don't get me wrong....they are all super-smart and even when I disagree with them, I respect their smarts. Great website, glad you are aware of it. I'm actually looking to move some $$$ into their funds for my parents if they don't have the minimums I think they do. Hussman has great data -- but he's been wrong for decades. He never turns bullish, even at the bottoms in 2002, 2009 and 2020. I once met Robert Prechter who was THE MARKET GURU in the late-1980's. Is he still with the site ? Yes, corporate debt levels and LEVERAGE are much lower than pre-GFC. For instance, banks/financial companies have more TANGIBLE EQUITY than they did TOTAL EQUITY at any time going back to the 1950's. Leverage is down from 40x to 15x. That was a panic crash with negative futures oil prices. The stocks are STILL good value between dividends and capital appreciation. My ex-colleague Paul Sankey runs a free (for now ! ) website with his insights and stock picks. He was probably the best oil analyst on Wall Street during the 1990's and 2000's. Check him out.

The market for TSLA is discounting not only auto but software services (higher margins) and batteries, solar, and electricity re-sales. I personally would not buy the stock here but you can VERY EASILY justify the price if they execute perfectly. If they don't, it's overpriced by 20-30%. If they screw up bigtime, it's overvalued by 50-75%.